Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/43

 to commit the most glaring violations of the Charter, which secured perfect religious freedom to all parties. Another foolish act was the deposition of the two generals Thurn and Mansfelt, who had signalised themselves by a series of victories, and the elevation of a couple of particularly incompetent strangers into their places. The result was the complete defeat of the Bohemian army, on Nov. 8, 1620, at the White Mountain, a few miles from Prague, a defeat which was not retarded by the obstinate refusal of Frederic to favour his army with his presence until he had had his dinner. He fled immediately on receiving the news of the defeat, and Prague was soon in the hands of the imperialists.

Then came the day of blood,—the 21st of June, 1621,—when twenty-seven of Bohemia’s best and noblest perished on the scaffold. The Bohemian Brethren and Calvinists were immediately banished from the country, and in Feb. 1622, the Utraquist and Lutheran clergy at Prague were offered the alternatives of giving up their wives and receiving a fresh ordination, or leaving Bohemia. On June 18, 1623, the stone-chalice, overlaid with gold, was taken down from the Teyn church at Prague, and the bones of the Utraquist Archbishop Elect, Rokycana, publicly burnt. Crowds of monks were introduced from Spain, Italy, and other Catholic countries. In the spring of 1626 a decree was published to the following effect:—No one who refused to profess the Catholic religion might carry on any trade, business, or profession. No preaching, baptisms, or marriages were allowed in any house, and it was punishable with death to harbour any evangelical clergyman; the non-Catholic dead were not to be buried by Catholic priests, but the burial fees were to be paid for them all the same; any one convicted of holding any heretical service in his house must leave the country; all children were to be withdrawn from non-Catholic schools,